


One of the Chosen I: Everything to Everyone

by Viridian5



Series: Tangled String [5]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Action/Adventure, Clones, Drama, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1998-03-31
Updated: 1998-03-31
Packaged: 2017-10-02 08:16:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viridian5/pseuds/Viridian5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Project's work with the clones turns out to be more insidious than anyone except Krycek expected, while Brian gets targeted again just when Mulder needs to speak with him most.  And whose side <i>is</i> Krycek on? <i>XF</i>/<i>Kalifornia</i> crossover.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One of the Chosen I: Everything to Everyone

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for "Kill Switch." Brian, Carrie, and Early Grayce courtesy of Dominic Sena. Jake Fleiss by Zalman King. All things from _The Island of Dr. Moreau_ (1996) from Edward R. Pressman and New Line Cinema. Brian's song snippet is from "Head Like a Hole" by Nine Inch Nails. Subtitle inspired by Everclear's "Everything to Everyone."
> 
> Dark Angel/Alice Pryor/Serafine Fitzwalter is mine.
> 
> Thanks to Small Woodinat Creature for proofreading, fact-checking, and pronoun-testing.
> 
> This story picks up a few months after "A Tangled String of Blood and Entropy" and a week after "Dead Time (I, II, and III)". You don't have to read either to make sense of this, but it would definitely help.

_"It doesn't help to be one of the chosen"_  
  -- "Driven Like the Snow" by The Sisters of Mercy

_"Diplomacy is saying, `Nice doggie!' ...till you find a rock."_  
  -- a Mikey's Thought for the Day  
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When the small box arrived in the mail at his apartment, Mulder was surprised. He hadn't ordered anything. It contained an unlabeled videocassette. The yellow post-it note attached to it had these words written on it: "You have to see this for yourself. I have to warn you though that it isn't pretty. K."

Despite the warning, Mulder smiled as he inserted the tape into the machine. His smile quickly faded.

******************************************************

Scully walked into the small basement office and knew immediately that something was wrong even before she saw the look on her partner's face. "I have a video to show you," he said. Any joke she might have made regarding his usual choice in videos died before it even reached her lips as she heard the dead tone of his voice. She nodded, and he pressed Play.

The tape showed a nondescript man in a suit in what seemed to be a hospital's private room. "Today is September 14, 1993," he said. "This is an interview with Kitsune3, the last survivor of the control group." He moved off-screen, revealing a group of men standing around a very battered looking young man sitting in a chair. Gauze wrapped his wrists. His face looked swollen and bruised in places, and a gauze pad had been taped to the left side of his face near his cheekbone. Blood caked his hair at the hairline. Unevenly dilated pupils suggested concussion. He looked dazed and drugged. He also looked like Mulder.

"Mulder, is that Brian Kessler?" Scully asked. He nodded darkly and gestured that she should look back at the screen.

One of the suits muttered, "My God, what the hell did the staff put him on?"

"Just some painkillers. Drugs affect the whole Kitsune line like this," another of the suits, an older man, said.

"I have to go save Carrie," Brian said, sounding out of his head. "Early has her. He's going to hurt her."

"She's fine, Brian. Early will never hurt you or her again. You saw to that," a familiar voice said from off-screen. Scully paled as she recognized the Cancer Man's voice.

"Then where is she?"

"The nurses are taking good care of her, keeping her safe. You don't have to worry about her anymore. Did you tell the cops anything, Brian?"

"Told them everything. If you don't tell cops everything or if you lie, they beat the shit out of you. Dad taught me that."

"We'll have to plug that hole," one of the others said. Scully heard someone mutter, "They really had to pick someone that much like Bill?"

The older man who'd talked about the painkillers earlier said, "Brian, I'm a doctor. We just want to ask you a few questions to help you and Carrie."

"Okay."

"I want to ask you about your sister."

"No!" Two suits had to restrain him to keep him in his seat.

"It was a long time ago, Brian. Surely it doesn't still hurt so much?"

Brian seemed to be struggling to keep his face blank. "She ran away. Dad said she ran away. I don't know anything about it."

"At eight? That's a bit young to seriously run away, isn't it?" At the doctor's words Scully's heart rose into her throat. Oh, God.

"Dad said she ran away. My fault."

"Your parents broke up after that. Was that your fault too?"

"Yes," Brian said, grinding the words out. "And it's my fault Dad's dead too, because I wanted him to die. It took a few years and a bodega store robbery, but I got what I wanted. Now I want my gun. Early gave it to me"

"Brian, you're in no shape to--"

"I want my gun!" He exploded out of his seat and grabbed one of the men who'd held him down. Brian had one arm around the man's neck, using him as a human shield. Brian held the man's own gun pointed at his head. "Now, no more questions. Do you want me to make this man shorter?" Brian's dilated eyes glittered.

Suddenly Brian stood in the center of a circle of drawn guns. He started to laugh. "His life means nothing to you, does it? I can see... But you still want me alive for some reason." He said directly into his hostage's ear, "Did you hear that? Your life is worthless to them, so it's worthless to me too." His finger started to pull the trigger...

One of the suits rushed him from behind and plunged a hypodermic needle into his neck. Brian went down. His former hostage quickly backed away. Two of the men picked Brian up off the floor and pushed him back into the chair.

"Is he really out this time? I don't want 3 to rise from the dead again," the Cancer Man said. "You're all pathetic. I give you the best training money can buy, and someone who was drugged up, who hadn't killed anyone prior to today, and who had been trained by some inbred, redneck slasher almost got the better of you. This whole affair has been a botch."

"We lost track of him for only a few days, sir--"

"And that was more than enough time for Early Grayce to ruin what was left of the integrity of our final control subject."

"You didn't use a clinical setting!" the doctor protested. "I could no more stop Kitsune3's father from taking a bullet than I could prevent the other two control Kitsunes from killing themselves. We still have eleven experimentals and one control. Maybe we should become more involved in their lives, fine-tune their environments more..."

"No, that violates the whole point. 3 is still useful. Did you see how he was analyzing the situation even in his condition? His breakdown here mirrored Fox's breakdown only with more violence towards others. Given the circumstances, I think we can all understand why."

"I wish I could understand why Kitsune3 shared the rest of the control group's interest in serial killers but took it in an academic instead of forensic route," the doctor said seemingly to himself. Then he looked at the Cancer Man. "Sir, I have an idea."

"That's what we're paying you for."

"He took his little trip to break through the writer's block he faced on a book he was supposed to be writing about serial killers. When I hypnotize him to forget our presence, I can also suggest that he turn that book into the true story of what happened to him, from his point of view. The moment his publisher gets the manuscript a copy could be sent to us. It would be more detailed than anything we would get from him now."

"Do it. And get him back to a doctor. He ripped some of his stitches open."

Mulder turned the tape off and gave Scully time to think about what she'd just seen. She had accepted, with difficulty, the idea that Mulder had been cloned by the conspiracy. He'd found out that ten of these clones were currently scattered throughout the country. Now she had to wrap her mind around the idea that some of those clones had been given an approximation of Mulder's life even down to his sister's abduction and parents' divorce.

Other disturbing thoughts crowded her mind. Did the conspiracy give every member of the control group the same sister, clones of Samantha, as well? Brian's "breakdown mirrored Fox's breakdown"? The other two clones who had been raised like Mulder had killed themselves. And it sounded as if Brian's father beat him on a number of occasions, with one of the suits wondering why "they had to pick someone so much like Bill."

Mulder looked at her as if expecting her to ask, even if it would kill him to answer. Although her curiosity nagged her, she decided not to. If he wanted her to know for sure, he would tell her when he could.

She worried on Brian's account as well. And, if no one had stopped him, would he have killed that man simply because he could?

Mulder looked like death. "I have to look into this, Scully. Someone has to pay."

******************************************************

Brian finished tying his hightops and got up to leave. Right now boredom was a constant companion. As much as he wanted to write, everything he typed came out as maudlin as his mood.

Angel had left with Douglas two days ago for parts unknown. What Brian didn't know couldn't be dragged out of him by force. She had helped pull him back together, and her sweetness had stunned him.

Brian intended to play a bit of basketball to get his mind off his worries. He had his laptop computer, disks, writer's journal, and pens in his backpack; his wallet, keys, and bullets in his jeans' pockets; and his gun in the waistband. All the essentials.

He picked up the basketball and walked halfway to the door when the phone rang. Since he stayed at someone else's apartment, he let the machine take it first. After the message Mulder's voice said, "Brian, if you're there, please pick up. This is important."

Brian picked up the phone. "Brian here. What is it? It's only been a week."

"I need to see you. I'm coming to LA. There's something you have to see."

"Sure, Mulder--" Brian heard someone stop in front of the door then the sound of a lock being picked. He steadied the basketball in his hand. Angel had told him long ago that anything could become a deadly weapon if applied to the right place with enough force. He'd learned that for himself years earlier when desperation had led him to pick up a shovel and use it as a club.

"Brian?" Mulder asked. The door opened, giving Brian a split second to see where the man's head would be, then he threw the ball with all the force he could muster. He took a moment to recognize his target. Before Brian could see how it hit, he dropped the phone, ran to a window, opened it, and plunged out onto the fire escape. He slid down the ladders and hit the sidewalk running.

Krycek wiped the blood off the side of his head and waited out the dizziness. He could already feel the area starting to swell. Only split-second reflexes had saved his head from being pulped. He looked back at the crater the ball had left in the hallway wall. The two surprised-looking thugs with him carefully stepped over the spinning ball.

"Brian? Brian?" Mulder's voice shouted from the receiver.

Krycek picked it up. "You just missed him."

"What the hell are you doing there?"

"After all we've shared, your lack of trust wounds me. I thought he might need help. I cued you in on what's going on for a reason. He's still being followed, you know. Paranoid puppy that he is, Brian made a run for it when he heard me at the door. It's not as if I could kidnap him, one-armed as I am. Could you imagine me trying to haul his lanky ass, so much like yours, out of here?"

"I'll be in L.A. in an hour. I have to find him."

"Of course you do. See you soon." Krycek hung up the phone.

"He's already gone," one of the thugs snarled.

"I tried to tell you. Did you see the way he dived for that specific window? He had an escape plan. You can't travel in the Angel of Death's circle without being able to take care of yourself." Krycek looked out the open window. He remembered the look on Kessler's face as he flung the basketball. No doubt, no hesitation. It seemed that Angel had made Kessler her protégé as well as her lover. This made everything so much easier and more interesting. He smiled. "He may be good enough to lose us. We better finish our business and get going."

******************************************************

An hour later Brian stopped at an upscale cafe far from the apartment, ordered a coffee, and plugged in his computer. He sent an e-mail to the Psycho Bulletin Board at Angel's website. She started the board after realizing that among the scoffers and true believers who signed into her Guestbook were nutjobs and poets using it as an odd forum. Sites devoted to the paranormal and the extraterrestrial tended to get that. The scoffers she laughed at and the true believers often turned out to be leads for jobs for her as self-styled monster killer.

She didn't want to discourage the nutjobs and poets though, so she created the PBB as a place where their mutant creativity could flourish. People left rants, poetry, and messages there. Surprisingly, the PBB had won her site some awards and attracted the interest of some publishers.

Brian used one of the rotating e-mail addresses she'd left for him and sent: "Deja vu. The rat was at my door. Uncertainty is the only certainty in life. On the road again, afoot, with no set destination. Guide me, oh sweet muse." Eventually she would check in and find his posting.

Brian had thought to call his guardian angels, but he'd have to stay in one place for them to meet up with him. Out of the question. He'd already called Matt at work and begged him not to return to the apartment for fear of what might be waiting there. Matt scoffed a little but remembered the "terrorist attack" at Brian's beach house a week earlier and promised to stay elsewhere, especially after Brian told him about the door's lock being picked.

Alex Krycek had picked the lock on his door and entered the apartment with a few other people. None of Brian's prior experiences with Krycek had made Brian ever want to see the triple agent again, especially not after Krycek had led a small army of goons to Brian's house a week earlier. Supposedly it had been part of some convoluted plot to save Mulder, but the personal fallout had landed squarely on Brian, Angel, Jake, and Douglas.

He remembered what Angel had told him about Krycek. A man who never seemed to work for less than two different sides at a time, Krycek usually tried to keep all sides just happy enough that they wouldn't kill him while getting whatever he could out of the deal. He remained loyal only to himself. As Angel put it: "I don't know why anyone still trusts the little guttersnipe with anything, unless it's something to do with the way he looks up at you from under those long lashes." She also said that Krycek occasionally did work for the KGB. Brian had started to say something about having thought that the KGB had collapsed with the Soviet Republic, but she gave him a pitying look that said it all. "Why do you think I call him `Alexei'?" she asked.

Brian firmly brought himself back to the here and now. While an eidetic memory had many benefits, it could also distract you down a long road of crisp, interconnected memories until your train of thought floated in the stratosphere somewhere and you lost all touch with physical reality. Besides, it made him remember her so vividly that he only ached for her more.

He closed down the computer and left the cafe, unwilling to stay in one place for too long a time. Two hours later, he signed onto the Internet at one of the local library's computers and checked the board. Among other interesting postings he found one using a default AOL e-mail address that said, "All roads lead to Where You Are. A.R.B." The reference to the road and "A Round Bird" identified her. He translated the message as Angel's way of saying, "I'm coming." She would find him somehow.

It worried him that he found another message that said, "Bunny, come home. All is forgiven. Peanut." He tried to decide if the message was simply a failed attempt to fool him or a mockery, a threat. The person used the right names but the wrong tone. Angel never joked in writing, preferring to have facial expressions or a voice handy as a guide to the level of sarcasm being applied.

Someone knew far too much about them and wanted them to realize that they hadn't been as sneaky as they thought. It made him wonder who else was playing along.

Brian left the library at a brisk walk, checking all the while for tails. It brought him back to all the times he'd played games on his tails before, baiting them, because nothing he did got rid of them completely and he couldn't know they followed him and do nothing. He took the alleys. If anyone found him and took him down, he wanted as few bystanders in the way as possible.

Brian heard a sound behind him and turned to see Krycek, alone, standing there. Brian drew his gun and fired, but Krycek had already moved, amazingly fast for an unbalanced man, and rushed him. If he fired now, the shrapnel would nail him. Brian grinned as an adrenaline charge hit him. He kicked and hit the bruised and swollen area on Krycek's head. Krycek cursed but kept moving after the impact set him back a little and collided with Brian in a tackle. Brian flipped him away but felt an odd burning in his neck. He rammed Krycek's head into a wall but felt his arms and legs going rubbery until he slid like a boneless heap to the ground, momentarily retaining only enough motor control to avoid landing on the precious computer in his backpack. He couldn't even move his tongue or lips to speak.

Grinning like a maniac through the blood running down his face, Krycek solicitously picked up Brian's fallen gun and tucked it back into the waistband of Brian's jeans, then pulled a hypodermic needle from Brian's neck. Horrified, Brian couldn't even squirm under the uninvited touch.

Krycek smiled. "This worked out even better than I thought it would." Krycek flipped open a cellular phone, dialed a number, and said, "I have your boy, Fox. I had to get a bit rough with him since he was in full panic mode." Krycek listened silently with a smile on his face to what had to be one of Mulder's tirades. Krycek provided the street address and signed off with, "Come soon, Fox. You know how I, and all the other people hunting Kessler, hate to wait."

Krycek looked down at his immobile captive. "Don't worry your pretty head about me using a cell phone. With the tracking chip they planted in you, they know where you are all the time anyway. That's how I found you. They did it while you were in the hospital after your final run-in with Early Grayce. Mulder has one too. Just you two. The other Kitsunes are sheep who don't need one." Brian shivered involuntarily at the word "kitsunes" without knowing why. Krycek noticed. "Mulder is a wolf trying really hard to be a sheep, while you..." Krycek smiled. "My head will ring for days. Angel's chosen protege. Do you know how fortunate you are?

"I'm happy you put up such a fight. I played guide to those two to keep my credentials current, but I would have found a way to get you loose and on your way to Mulder. You saved me the trouble and intimidated them too. If I had let you take Mulder's call and left you alone, Mulder would bring the tape and Scully to your friend's apartment, and you would all die."

Krycek pulled Brian into the shadows and into a firm one-armed embrace. The other arm with its prosthetic wrapped around Brian more loosely. Someone would have to look to see the two of them hiding there. "I've been working out, Brian. It's amazing the things you can do when you have no choice. You'll find out what this is all about soon, although I suspect you remember more than they wanted you to. Kitsune." Brian shivered again at the rush of dread that word dredged from him and felt angry tears come to his eyes. He couldn't control himself. He felt like a mind trapped in a dead body.

Krycek brushed the helpless tears away. "Don't feel so bad about it, Kessler. When you're caught up in something so much bigger than yourself, the best you can do is survive and try to come out with as much as possible. It would be nice to have Mulder this way, just once, those luscious lips parted, unable to move or speak, only able to communicate with me through those intense green-gold eyes. A shame your color-blindness doesn't let you appreciate your own eyes. They're gorgeous." Then an emotion--could it possibly be guilt?--passed through Krycek's eyes. "I'm sorry. I forgot how much he's afraid of not being able to move. You are too, aren't you? Sorry. It can't be helped."

Failure. Caught by an enemy who had God knew what in mind. Brian had begun to feel a little safer, a little more sufficient. Now he knew it to be illusion. He thought of all the time he'd spent traveling with Angel while something treacherous in his own body trumpeted their location to those she hated most.

Krycek gripped his wrist tightly, and Brian tried to banish the irrational wedge of panic that lodged in his heart. Any pressure on his scarred wrists did this to him, brought him back to a place and time he couldn't forget no matter how hard he tried. He couldn't even wear a wristwatch. Now this bastard kidnapped him, immobilized him, and carelessly tripped every phobia he had.

Brian dreamed of finishing what he started, splitting that head open. He thought of what Angel would do to Krycek when she caught up with them. She had an inventive mind and a talent for sadism.

Then the bastard started to stroke his hair, probably forgetting which one he held. At least Brian hoped that was it. Brian prayed for Mulder to arrive faster.

******************************************************

Waiting for Mulder. Krycek figured that to be the title for this chapter, the last few years of his life. He hoped Mulder hadn't managed to convince himself that their night together could be blamed on mind-controlling drugs or possession or some other weird, unlikely thing Mulder could dredge from his odd brain. He hoped Mulder wasn't feeling guilty about it. Or that if he was, it wouldn't get in the way of them repeating the experience.

Krycek hated himself for being afraid. This was what getting involved did to you. It made betrayal and self-preservation so much harder. Was it really worth it? Then he remembered that night, Mulder begging him, and Mulder consenting to being called "Fox." He remembered the next morning when Fox helped him dress. It took 45 minutes. Maybe it was worth it.

He realized that he had been aimlessly stroking Brian Kessler's hair. Kessler kept it shorter than Mulder did now, although Mulder's hair had been a lot like this when Krycek had been partnered to him. It stood up a bit and felt as fine as feathers under his fingers. He stopped the stroking, not wanting to further antagonize a man who'd nearly killed him twice today already.

This wasn't Mulder. Krycek's hand brushed over the facial scar, unable to help itself. This body was bonier, harder, evidence of a life lived on the run, more like Krycek's own. Dressed all in black and dark blue, although the one blue and one black hightop sneaker combination had a funky touch that disrupted any further comparison of Brian with himself. Imbued with a deadly force that Brian, unlike Mulder, seemed to feel less and less guilty about using. Krycek felt the life crackling through the body under his hands as Brian struggled to move.

Last control member of the Kitsune line. Brian, who had calmly withstood so much, had shuddered and cried at the name. Japanese, like the men who did the actual cloning.

Krycek wondered if Pryor, Dark Angel, had penetrated the Project's secrets deeply enough to know about the Imoto, "younger sister," line attached to Fox and the control Kitsunes 3, 7, and 9. He wondered if she had the guts to decide the issue for herself, to see for certain if she belonged to that line. If she was one of the Kitsune line's sisters and thus, sister to her own lover. Remembering the threats and the blow she had directed at him a week ago, the thought of her finding out that she was an Imoto made him smile.

Mulder stepped into the alley. "Over here," Krycek hissed. He enjoyed watching the conflicting emotions flow over Mulder's face as he saw them. Some dark, sad thing in Mulder's eyes set him back though.

"What did you do to him?" Mulder asked.

"Nice greeting. What did I do to him? Look what he did to me, Mulder!"

"What did he do to your face?"

"Well, my face hit a basketball, his foot, a brick wall, a brick wall, and a brick wall." Krycek disentangled himself and stood. The next second Mulder wrapped him in an embrace and stole the breath from him with a deep kiss that seemed to make a thousand promises and say "I want you," "I need you," and "I'm sorry" all at once. Even as Krycek melted into it, he felt a deep pang of sadness at the realization that something terrible had happened to Mulder to prompt such a display of need. It bothered him that Mulder always chased things that would only hurt him if he caught them, but who was he to talk?

When Mulder let him go, Krycek had to catch his breath before he spoke. "Brian's incinerating us with his eyes right now. You'll have to get him into the car. Be careful with the computer in the pack on his back; he hurt himself falling to avoid landing on it." Mulder gave him a wry look but picked Brian up, stopping only to demand that Krycek open the door so Mulder could put Brian in the back seat.

They drove away in silence, but Krycek could feel Mulder watching him. "Where's Scully?" Krycek asked after twenty minutes of deep, slightly uncomfortable silence.

"I let her know what's going on but ditched her. She has enough trouble on her without me dragging her under the attention of the conspiracy. I left her a message."

"I'm sure she'll be thrilled. You know she'll track us down."

"At least I left her a note this time. I don't think she would approve of us." Mulder's smile turned wry. "She might convince me."

"I'm deeply wounded."

Then an arm came around Krycek's neck from behind and rested very lightly on him, not threatening for now but with the possibility of strangulation in the near future. Not from Mulder but from Brian, who now crouched behind Krycek's seat. Apparently, the drug had worn off.

A long finger started to lightly stroke the bruised and swollen side of Krycek's head, stirring a feeling that shifted from pleasure to pain to some maddening sensation halfway between the two that was worse than pain. He briefly wondered where Kessler had learned that until he remembered Dark Angel. Mulder watched out of the corner of his eye as he drove, obviously uncertain over how he should respond or if he should intervene.

"Not as much as you will be. How does it feel?" Brain asked, his warm breath flickering over Krycek's ear, his arm putting more pressure on Krycek's neck. "Not as much fun being on the other side, is it?"

Krycek hadn't seen Brian in action a week ago, but he could swear that this sort of behavior was out of character for Kessler even if you counted the months he'd spent in the Angel of Death's company. Casual violence without hesitation or remorse from a man who'd been guilt-stricken over such impulses only a few months ago. It made him wonder.

"Brian, we're here to help you," Mulder said.

"Forgive me if I don't see being attacked, kidnapped, and drugged as being very helpful."

"Krycek dug up some information and a video tape you need to see."

"You ask yourself how far you should trust Krycek. I don't know what he is to you, but he's a harbinger of disaster to me. He keeps leading killers to the places I live in."

Krycek felt Mulder and then Brian too focusing in on him until he felt like a bug pinned under a magnifying glass with the sunlight streaming down. As Brian's whole attitude seemed to shift towards Mulder's, becoming less threatening and a little more sexual, Krycek finally understood Brian's metamorphosis.

Mulder had been an uncanny profiler for his empathy, his ability to get inside the minds of others and become them. Before his mental breakdown, he had started to transform into an unholy amalgam of the creatures he hunted, evaluating passersby for victim status, ever aware of places that would serve as a good dumping ground for bodies. He never acted on these things as far as anyone knew, but his feeling of drowning combined with burnout and the trauma of his sister's abduction breaking through the barriers sent him to breakdown-land. A similar thing had happened to two of the Kitsune controls.

Mulder survived because his connections got him the best in personalized, individual care. The other two didn't. Sent to warehouse-style institutions, they received neither the therapy nor supervision they needed. Warren Elend slashed his own throat with the sharp, jagged end of a snapped plastic spork, while Keith Connor broke free, attacked the most dangerous mental patient he could find, and let the man kill him. No one knew how either of them had escaped supervision, the hospital's or that of their government tails.

After his release, Mulder further cultivated a protective self-centeredness and abstraction to shut down the empathy when he didn't need it the same way he cultivated a feeling of queasiness when around corpses to stop himself from dwelling on things he didn't want to think about. But what if Kessler, a writer, had the same talent but left himself open, using that empathy and a gift for observation for his own profession?

Put such a person tranked down in a room full of professional Killers, and he would try to kill a man for no reason other than that he couldn't use him. With Mulder around, Brian became a more intense version of himself with a few of Mulder's unique quirks tossed in. Alone with Krycek, Brian had fought as Krycek would. Put him with Dark Angel, who was famous for her lack of remorse, and you created a very dangerous man. Krycek tried to imagine Brian on that fateful road trip years ago being one person while with his girlfriend Carrie and another entirely while with Early Grayce.

Some core of Kessler seemed to remain constant but the people around him would affect his proclivities. When in the company of killers, the empathy would provide a handy protective camouflage, but at what cost? Did Kessler even know what happened to him?

Actually, this helped Krycek better understand what had gone wrong with Elend and Connor. Locking an already disturbed person with empathy into a building full of insane people with violent and self-destructive tendencies could constitute aiding and abetting suicide.

Brian snapped out of his Mulder-induced trance and leaned forward to turn on the radio with his free hand. He flipped through the channels until he heard something lite-industrial, then let go of Krycek's neck and sat back in his seat. Krycek felt oddly disappointed. Under his breath, Brian sang, "...Black as your soul / I'd rather die / Than give you control / Bow down before the one you serve / You're going to get what you deserve..."

"You don't have to listen to that stuff when Angel's not around," Mulder said.

"How many ways can you misunderstand me, Mulder? I dressed all in black ages before I met Serafine. I dated girls like Carrie, who seemed to be trying to gather the world's largest collection of black lacy bras. Angel was still Nicole Desjardin, casual utilitarian, not Goth, when I first met her anyway. Why does your famous insight always fail around the people you're close to?"

"Damned if I know," Mulder answered in all seriousness. "What do you think?"

"Maybe your own delusions get in the way with people you have a personal stake in."

"Why did you take your interest in serial killers in an academic instead of a forensic route like I did?" Mulder's question made Krycek sit up straighter as he remembered where he first heard it.

"It's not a nice story."

"Indulge me."

"Why not? My father thought I was stupid and useless but he wouldn't think of me breaking with the Kessler family tradition of law enforcement. I was heading in your direction, Mulder. NYPD instead of FBI though. Then Dad got killed while I was at college.

"They had one of those big pomp-and-circumstance cop funerals. As they lowered the coffin into the hole, I finally realized that he was really gone, he wouldn't come up behind me and smack me across the back of my head for being stupid enough to believe him dead. I was free.

"I changed my major, though I kept a minor in psychology, and courses as soon as I could. Sometimes I would be sitting in a literature or writing class and feel the bastard looking over my shoulder muttering that it was stupid and I would never make a living with it. That I would never be any good at it. I flipped off his memory every time. I lost the clean-cut Young Republican look and hung with a new group of people my father would have killed me for.

"I think I'm better off away from forensics. With what I know about you, I know I made the right decision."

"You have no idea." He frowned when he saw Krycek's smirk. "You still feel guilt over your father's death though."

"I would accuse you of transferring your own emotions to me if you weren't right. We seem to be designed for guilt."

******************************************************

They ended up at a hotel in a room with two double beds and a VCR. Mulder pretended not to notice the significant looks Krycek kept tossing him. Mulder put the tape in and set Brian in front of the TV, watching him as he watched the tape. At the end, Mulder asked, "You read my dossier and never suspected?"

Brian sat there looking as if breathing took more thought than he had to spare. "My father's death, years before your father's death, screwed it. I wasn't egotistical enough to think that it would have to be a plot if someone else lost a sister and had parents who divorced because of it. Apparently I was wrong. I didn't know about the two dead ones they mentioned; if I had I would have seen a pattern. My God, if I had gone into forensics like Dad wanted me to I'd be dead now."

"What did your sister look like?"

"You mean, was she Samantha's clone?" Brian took a picture out of his wallet and handed it to Mulder. The photograph, soft and ragged-edged from years of handling, showed a boy, eyes rolled heavenwards in older brother disdain, being clutched by a younger girl. At first glance the girl could be Samantha's twin, but on closer scrutiny you could see slight differences in the eyes and nose. "Elizabeth Ann Kessler, called `Bethie' by her obnoxious older brother because he knew it annoyed her."

"She's obviously our sister, but not Samantha."

"The Imoto line needed a little genetic diversity for the Project's plans," Krycek said. He ignored the intense stares of the two men. "They were designed to be the control Kitsunes' sisters, but the Project always thought they could have other uses. All of them were abducted. I've been researching since I unearthed the video."

Brian retrieved the picture from Mulder's grip and returned it to his wallet. "What I want to know is, why now? Angel couldn't find any of this stuff a few months ago, and she's damned good at unearthing these kinds of secrets," Brian said. He took off his jacket and sprawled out on one of the beds, but his face didn't reflect the casual comfort his pose tried for.

"Nice shoes." Krycek sneered.

Brian glanced down at the one blue, one black hightop sneakers he wore. "You like them? I have a similar pair at home. Stop changing the subject."

"When the execution order went out on you and the others, the documentation started to rise to the surface. I found the transcript of their hypnotist's session with you. Do you know that they planted your current terror of the police in you?"

"That makes sense. The bastards. I hated and feared my father but prior to that I hadn't transferred my feelings to every other cop I met. I want a copy of the transcripts," Brian said. As Brian stretched out, Mulder saw aging green-brown-yellow bruises circling his clone's wrists. They had the shape of handprints, prints too small to belong to Krycek's hand. Mulder shuddered.

"Ask nicely," Krycek said.

"Go to hell," Brian said flatly and didn't even look at him, seeming to prefer to watch the commercials on TV even with the Mute on in a gesture of ultimate disdain.

"That's nice?"

Mulder knew where this conversation was heading by experience, so he said, "Enough already. Brian, with your distrust of Krycek, would you really believe that anything he gave you was the genuine article?"

"Hey!" Krycek protested.

"It would be nice to see anyway." Then Brian's eyes widened, and he used the remote embedded in the night table to turn the volume up again on the TV. Over a sensationalistic shot of a building engulfed in flames, the reporter spoke of ten people dead in what appeared to have been a firebombing centered in one apartment, #431B. "That's Matt's apartment," Brian said in a very small voice that quickly went very loud. "Your asshole friends just blew up his apartment! Why? It wasn't necessary, and they knew I wasn't there!"

"They're not my friends. They believe in making a point. You warned your friend not to go back anyway, right?"

Brian leapt to his feet and stood directly in front of Krycek, leaning into his face. "What the hell do they want from me? I don't like being a permanent fixture on the 11 o'clock news. They won't be happy until I'm forced to live in a cardboard box for everyone else's safety? That way, when they attack, I'm the only one who suffers. Are they trying to force me onto the road with Angel?"

"I swear I don't know." Krycek looked to Mulder for help, but Mulder only looked at him with a blank expression and eyes that smoldered with dark emotions. Brian's questions had struck a chord.

"That's not good enough!" Brian all but vibrated with aggression, holding himself back from striking Krycek only with great difficulty. He stepped back. "Why am I bothering with you anyway? It's not like you'd tell me the truth unless it served your purposes. I'm going to call Matt's friends one by one until I find him. If you disapprove, you can just bite me."

Mulder forestalled Krycek's inevitable response with a "Don't even think about it."

"How safe are we here?" Brian asked as he dialed. "Are you at least jamming the homing signals my and Mulder's chips are putting out?"

Krycek felt Mulder's eyes on him. "I am. They won't find us here." He knew he would have to answer for this. He had no idea why he'd stupidly told Kessler about it.

"What chips?" Mulder asked with a dark, flat tone.

"The Consortium put a homing chip in Brain five years ago and one in you last week."

"And you didn't think I needed to know?"

"They always know where you are anyway! It helps me keep track of you."

"So I'm supposed to be happy about this."

Krycek sighed. This was going to be a long fight.

 

*******************To be Continued*********************  
******in "One of the Chosen II: Jumping Through Hoops"****** 

 

For more truth and consequences, Mulder and Krycek getting some  
time alone together, and, just when you thought it wasn't possible,  
Dark Angel showing up with yet more news that further  
complicates her relationship with Brian.


End file.
